Mayor White, Judge Kent, and public service journalism

Two front page stories this week exemplify the value of skilled reporters providing readers with stories vital to our community.

City hall reporter Carolyn Feibel was the first to report Houston Mayor Bill White’s proposal to spend taxpayer dollars to pay debts of potential first-time homebuyers to help boost their credit scores. It was a curious proposal that set off a firestorm of reaction. It was quickly dropped the next day. The second story, the latest developments in the controversial case of U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent, stems from the dogged persistence of reporter Lise Olsen, columnist Rick Casey and others in an arduous quest for information about the actions of a federal judge with a lifetime appointment.

Feibel works at Houston City Hall, where the Chronicle is the only news outlet with an office. Her editor is a former city hall reporter and his institutional knowledge and familiarity with past practices and controversies are an asset. She got the scoop using basic reporting procedures; she read the council agenda, a weekly document that previews what council will vote on each Wednesday. The agenda and background documents vary between 150-300 pages.

I do this every week, and if something seems interesting or odd, I read the background documents and start reporting to see if there is a story there. My editor and I also discuss story potential together. In this case, the item caught my eye and so I called housing department staffers and did phone interviews with housing advocates, council members and other activists, Feibel explained.

The story was put on Chron.com Monday afternoon, then picked up by national and local outlets. The overwhelming critical response forced a withdrawal of the proposal by Wednesday.

Judge Kent

On Monday, Kent pled guilty to felony obstruction of justice charges for lying to federal judges who in 2007 were secretly investigating allegations of sexual misconduct against him. It was the first time in more than a decade that a federal judge had pled guilty to a felony – and the first time in U.S. history that a federal judge had been charged with a sex crime. But Kent might never have been criminally investigated at all if it weren’t for earlier work by the Chronicle.

In September 2007, the federal judicial council quietly reprimanded Kent for what it called only “sexual harassment” of an unnamed employee and released no details. The council also ordered all parties to say nothing about the case. Though Olsen wrote several stories on Kent, it washer story in November 2007 that for the first time provided a complete and shocking account about the allegations of two separate non-consensual sexual attacks on a female federal court employee that investigating federal jurists had concealed. Olsen also wrote that at least two other female court workers had complained that Kent had harassed or molested them. Days later, members of the House Committee on the Judiciary called for a criminal investigaton that resulted in Kent’s recent guilty plea and public admission that he had had “non-consensual sexual contact” with two female court employees in recent years.

Even in a severely challenging business environment for big-city dailies, including the Houston Chronicle, public service journalism is still essential to a community, whether it’s in print or online.